The primary intention of Bacon's semiotic analyses is, as it was already with Augustine, to provide the foundations for the semantics of spoken language.[27] According to Bacon, an adequate and complete account of the “difficult issue” (difficilis dubitatio) of what the significate of a vocal expression is has to consider three different aspects: 1) the signification of vocal expressions apart from impositio, i.e., apart from their being endowed with (conventional) meaning by ‘imposition’, 2) their signification according to imposition, and 3) their signification over and above imposition.

To speak of medieval semiotics is not to speak of a precisely defined discipline besides, and distinct from, other medieval arts and sciences; it is rather to speak of a complex field of more or less — mostly more — elaborate reflections on the concept of sign, its nature, function, and classification. In order to understand the enormous extent to which such theories grew during the Middle Ages some basic formal features of the scholastic organization of knowledge has to be kept in mind. First, scholastic learning is essentially a commentary tradition. Most of the writings either are explicit commentaries on what at a time were taken to be canonical texts (as e.g., the works of Aristotle, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the Grammar of Priscian, or the Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain or Buridan) or are at least composed with constant reference to the topics treated there. A second point, closely related to the first, is the common scholastic practice of putting great effort into the conceptual analysis of the basic terms and notions. Thus, wherever terms like ‘sign’ (signum) or ‘representation’ (repraesentatio) appeared in the texts commented on, scholastic authors felt obliged either to give an explicit account of these concepts or at least to be able to refer to a place where this has been done. In view of this, the fact that Aristotle in his On Interpretation had incidentally called the word a ‘sign’ (semeion, symbol) of the mental concept or that Augustine had termed the sacrament a ‘sacred sign’ (signum sacrum) became most important for the later development of semiotics. For in both cases the outcome was a large number of detailed explorations of the nature and divisions of sign.

Even if impositio in the described sense is of pivotal importance for the constitution of linguistic meaning, the signification of words is by no means limited to it: “a vocal expression signifies many things for which it is not imposed, as it signifies all those things that bear an essential relation to the thing for which the word is imposed.”[34] In this way, Bacon claims, words signify, as it were, infinitely many things.

The genesis of an elaborate theory of signs in the second half of the 13th century is the result of a complex interplay of Aristotelian and Augustinian influences. Since the mid-13th century Augustinian views, until then effective mainly in theological discussions, begin to invade the faculties of arts. Due to this, the sign is increasingly taken as the basic concept of the ‘linguistic science’ (scientia sermocinalis):[16] “Speech is nothing but a sign” (Sermo totaliter signum est), Robert Kilwardby asserts (Kilwardby De ortu scientiarum, 1976, 160). Roger Bacon praises the sign even as the principal instrument of all Liberal Arts.[17] It is true, the consciousness of words being signs is nothing new. From this point onward, however, it gives rise, at first in the framework of grammar theory, to semiotic reflections that go beyond what is known from earlier centuries.

Bacon intends to solve the resulting difficulties (which every causal theory of meaning based on the concepts of ‘reference setting’ and ‘reference borrowing’ has to face) by distinguishing two modes of imposition. This can be seen as his most inventive contribution to semantics.[33] Besides the ‘formal’ mode of imposition conducted by a ‘perlocutionary’ vocal expression like “I call this …” (modus imponendi sub forma impositionis vocaliter expressa) there is another kind taking place tacitly (sine forma imponendi vocaliter expressa) whenever a term is applied (transumitur) to any object other than the first name-giver has ‘baptized’ (Bacon, De signis, 1978, 130). Whereas the formal mode of imposition refers either to the mythical situation of a first invention of language or to the act of explicitly coining a new word, the second kind of imposition describes what actually happens during the everyday use of language. This modification of the meaning of words is constantly taking place without the speaker or anyone else being actually aware of it. For just by using language we “all day long impose names without being conscious of when and how” (nos tota die imponimus nomina et non advertimus quando et quomodo) (Bacon, De signis, 1978, 100, 130f.)

In the late 11th century Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) revived the Augustinian doctrine of the verbum mentis, combining it with the Aristotelian view on mental concepts outlined in the opening chapter of Peri Hermeneias. Thus, the two aspects of the mental word — which are found more or less implicitly in Augustine's work already — became explicit in Anselm. First: mental words are natural words and thus identical for all human beings (they are “verba … naturalia … et apud omnes gentes eadem”) (Anselm of Canterbury, Monolog., 1968: 25); and second: they are similitudes and mental images of things (similitudines et imagines rerum).[13] Due to this, they signify their objects in a more expressive way (expressius signant) than any other kind of words, and thus they are, as Anselm agrees with Augustine, what has to be termed ‘word’ in its most proper sense (Anselm of Canterbury, Monolog., 1968: 25).

The definition of mental concepts as signa rerum also provides the basis of a close interconnection of logic and epistemology as it is characteristic especially of the later Middle Ages. In conjunction with this, a redefinition of the notion of signification (significare) is taking place. For where the mental concepts, i.e., the acts of understanding (intellectus), are considered to be signs themselves, the Aristotelian definition of significare (signifying) as to constitute an understanding (constituere intellectum) can no longer be regarded as adequate. As a result, the terminology of ‘representation’ (repraesentatio, repraesentare, facere praesens), originally used mainly in epistemological contexts, achieves an increasing importance for logical semantics by being fused with the terminology of ‘signification’. [...] Significatio is shortly described as “presentation of some form to the intellect” (praesentatio alicuius formae ad intellectus)[44] or as “representation of a thing by means of a conventional vocal expression” (rei per vocem secundum placitum repraesentatio) (Peter of Spain, Summule logicales, 1972, 79).

It has to be noticed that in Bacon's, as well as in any other medieval sign-typology, the classes of signs — even though this is not explicitly stated by the authors themselves — distinguish modes of signifying rather than signs in the sense of sign-vehicles. Therefore, one and the same thing, fact, or event may, in different respects, fall under various and even opposite sign-classes. This fact is especially important for the full account of sign-processes in which spoken language is involved.

The basic idea behind this theoretical extension of the notion of inscription is the indifference of de sign-function to the material instantiation of the sign. This arbitrariness of the medium of the sign holds for the signs not only with regard to their communicative capacity, but also with regard to their function in logical operations. As Paul of Venice points out, in principle it would be possible to form syllogisms or to draw conclusions by using sticks and stones instead of words or sentences (… possemus cum baculis syllogizare et cum lapidibus concludere) (Paul of Venice, Logica magna, prima pars, Tract. de terminis, 1979, 78). The fact that we, in general, do not do so, and that we do not communicate by means of sensible qualities like warms or smell, but rather use vocal or written terms in the strict sense, is only due to their greater operability (Paul of Venice, Logica magna, prima pars, Tract. de terminis, 1979, 78).[61] For we can utter articulated sounds whenever we want to but cannot produce with the same ease and distinctness the possible objects of the other senses like certain colors or smells.[

There are various areas within the scholastic system of arts and sciences where a rich tradition of semiotic questions and answers accumulated over the centuries (Maierù 1981; Meier-Oeser 1997, 42–170; Fuchs 1999). Most important are those places located in the realm of the so-called trivium (i.e., grammar, rhetoric and logic), especially in logic where already the determination of its primary subject as well as the discussion of the basic logical notions (like ‘term’ or ‘signification’) gave rise to explicit remarks on the concept of sign. The most relevant loci classici of logical contributions to a general theory of sign and signification are: the comments on Aristotle's introductory chapter of On Interpretation (esp. 1. 16a3–8), “the common starting point for virtually all medieval theories of semantics” (Magee 1989, 8), as well as the commentaries (especially from the 15th and early 16th century) on the first tract of the so-called Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain, and all texts or parts of logical textbooks that are related to one of the aforementioned passages.

Augustine divides the sign into the two main classes of natural signs (signa naturalia) and given signs (signa data). “Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the knowledge of something else”,[8] as, for example, smoke when it indicates fire, the footprint of an animal passing by, or the countenance of an angry or sorrowful man. “Conventional signs, on the other hand, are those which living beings mutually exchange in order to show, as well as they can, the feelings of their minds, or their perceptions, or their thoughts.”[9] Whether and to what extent such an “intention to signify” (voluntas significandi) can be assumed in cases of animal sign communication Augustine leaves open.[

attributing a fundamental epistemic function to the sign, claiming that “all instruction is either about things or about signs; but things are learnt by means of signs” (Omnis doctrina vel rerum est vel signorum, sed res per signa discuntur) (Augustine De doctr. chr. I 1, 1963, 9). The borderline between things and signs and thus the sign itself is defined functionally rather than ontologically: signs are things employed to signify something

Despite all the internal ruptures and inconsistencies, Augustine's doctrine of sign is based on a definition of the sign that, for the first time, intends to embrace both the natural indexical sign and the conventional linguistic sign as species of an all-embracing generic notion of sign, thus marking a turning point in the history of semiotics.

Whereas according to Augustine the sign, being an external entity by definition, was precluded from the sphere of the mind, it is now the mental sign, i.e., the mental concept or mental term (terminus mentalis), that is seen as the primary and most principal sign (signum mentale est primum et principalissimum signum, sine quo voces et scripta significare non possunt) (Florentius Diel, Modernorum summulae log., 1489, fol. a5v) as well as the ultimate ground of all signification.[58] Without such an ultimate and immediate signification instantiated in the formal signification of the mental concept, there would be, as John Raulin remarks, an infinite regress (processus in infinitum) in any signification, something like a Peircean ‘infinite semeiosis’.[

The consequences of this view are many: for instance, the rejection, or at least the modification, of Augustine's venerable definition of the sign, and the new possibility to describe the relationship between the concept and its object without referring to the notion of similitude. Furthermore, in the semantic triangle, the Boethian ordo orandi now can be described entirely in terms of sign and significate.[43] Insofar as concepts agree with vocal expressions in their function of being signs, it makes sense to conceive of thought processes as a kind of mental speech (oratio mentalis) showing close analogies to spoken discourse. This again paves the way for the development of a mentalist logic, the principal objects of which are not the vocal terms and propositions any longer, but rather the corresponding mental acts.

according to the most refined theory of Stoic logicians, a sign in the proper technical sense (semeion) was seen as the abstract propositional content of a sentence insofar it is functioning as the antecedent in a true implication by means of which a hitherto unknown truth is revealed. By contrast, Augustine is favoring a reifying concept of sign. A sign, as he defines it in line with the descriptions given by Cicero and the Latin tradition of rhetoric,[5] is “something that shows itself to the senses and something other than itself to the mind” (Signum est quod se ipsum sensui et praeter se aliquid animo ostendit) (Augustine De dial. 1975, 86). The concept of sign, thus defined in terms of a triadic relation (a sign is always a sign of something to some mind), provides the general basis for Augustine's theory of language: “To speak is to give a sign in articulate voice” (Loqui est articulata voce signum dare) (Augustine De dial. 1975, 86). Speech, in further contrast to Stoic semantics, is essentially characterized by its communicative function. A word, by definition, is a “sign of something, which can be understood by the hearer when pronounced by the speaker” (uniuscuiusque rei signum, quod ab audiente possit intelligi, a loquente prolatum) (Augustine De dial. 1975, 86). The communicative function[6] is thus essential to the linguistic sign: “There is no reason for signifying, i.e., for giving signs except to convey into another's mind what the sign-giver has in his own mind”

The criticism of modist grammar is based on a fundamental redefinition of the concept of sign, coming about after the mid-13th century. For the translocation of signification in the proper sense from the word to the intellect is based on the presupposition that, whatever Augustine may have said, mental concepts are signs themselves. [...] Once again, it is the mid-13th century where a conceptual change is taking place which, although at first it may seem to be a matter of nuance, turns out to be one of the most important junctures in the history of semiotics: mental concepts — without at first losing their status of being likenesses of things — begin to be characterized as signs of things (signa rerum).

The core set of ideas and doctrines from which medieval philosophers developed their semiotic theories was provided to them mainly by two late ancient authors. Besides Boethius (480–528), who transmitted Aristotelian semantics to the Latin Middle Ages, Augustine's (354–430) doctrine of sign is the most important junction of ancient and medieval theories of sign and signification.

In close analogy to this devaluation of the written word against the spoken one, Augustine in his later theory of verbum mentis (mental word) is advocating the devaluation of the spoken word and the external sign in general against the internal sphere of mental cognition. It is now the mental or interior word (verbum interius), i.e., the mental concept, that is considered as word in its most proper sense, whereas the spoken word appears as a mere sign or voice of the word (signum verbi, vox verbi) (Augustine, De Trinitate XV 11 20, 1968, 486f.).[11] Thoughts (cogitationes) are performed in mental words. The verbum mentis, corresponding to what later was called the conceptus mentis or intellectus, is by no means a ‘linguistic’ entity in the proper sense, for it is “nullius linguae”, i.e., it does not belong to any particular spoken language like Latin or Greek. So we are confronted with the paradoxical situation that linguistic terminology (e.g., verbum, locutio, oratio, dicere, etc.) is used to describe a phenomenon whose independence from any language is strongly emphasized at the same time.

The universality of the concept of sign, according to which in some respect “anything in the world is a sign” (omnis res mundi est signum) (Peter Margallus, Logices utriusque scholia, 1520, 146f.), is counterbalanced by the emphasis laid on the mental sign (signum mentale) providing the basis for the whole range of sign processes. Spoken words, just like any external signs in general, can signify only by mediation of an immediate signification, provided by the mental concepts.[56] Thus, as Petrus a Spinosa says, the whole signification depends on the mental term (tota significatio dependet a [termino] mentali) (Pedro de Espinosa, Tractatus terminorum, cited in Muñoz Delgado, 1983, 152f.)

Two other aspects of modism are in the focus of these criticisms: (1) the assertion of a close structural analogy between spoken or mental language and external reality (2) the inadmissible reification of the modus significandi adherent to its description as some quality or form added to the articulate voice (dictioni superadditum) through the act of imposition.

Bacon presents a detailed classification of signs[24] by taking up, combining, and modifying elements of several prior sign typologies. The division of the two main classes of natural and given signs is taken from Augustine, the distinction between necessary and probable signs is borrowed from Aristotle (an. pr. II, 27, 70a3-b5), and their subdivision according to their temporal reference is a traditional element in the theories of the sacramental sign.[25] 1. NATURAL SIGNS 1.1 signifying by inference, concomitance, consequence 1.1.1 signifying necessarily 1.1.1.1 signifying something present (large extremeties → strength) 1.1.1.2 signifying something past (lactation → birth of a child) 1.1.1.3 signifying something future (dawn → imminent sunrise) 1.1.2 signifying with probability 1.1.2.1 signifying sth. present (to be a mother → love) 1.1.2.2 signifying sth. past (wet ground → previous rain) 1.1.2.3 signifying sth. future (red sky in the morning → rain) 1.2 signifying by configuration and likeness (images, pictures, species of colour) 1.3 signifying by causality (tracks → animal) 2. SIGNS GIVEN AND DIRECTED BY A SOUL 2.1 signifying instinctively without deliberation (sigh → pain; laughter → joy) 2.2 signifying with deliberation (words) 2.3 interjections

In view of this it should be clear that the widespread opinion according to which in medieval philosophy the sign was characterized by the “classical definition” or the “famous formula of aliquid stat pro aliquo” (something stands for something)[53] is mistaken. It is suppositio, not significatio, that is characterized by that formula.[54] Even in Ockham's concept of sign, which comes closest to such a description, the aptitude ‘to stand for something’ is just one component of the whole function of the sign. In no case has the sign or act of signifying been conceived as a simple two-term relation of “something standing for something”.

Thus, scriptura left aside, the remaining three elements are structurally organized along the lines of the prominent ‘semiotic triangle’ according to which signs refer to things by means of concepts

2) In his account of signification of words regarding their ‘impositio’ Bacon accentuates the arbitrariness of meaning.[28] But even though the first ‘impositor’ (name-giver) is free to impose a word or sign on anything whatsoever, he does perform the act of imposition according to the paradigm of baptism: “all names which we impose on things we impose inasmuch as they are present to us, as in the case of names of people in Baptism”.[29] Contrary to the venerable tradition of Aristotelian, Boethian or Porphyrian Semantics,[30] holding that spoken words, at least immediately, signify mental concepts, Bacon favors the view that words, according to their imposition, immediately and properly signify the things themselves. With this account of linguistic signification Bacon abandons the model of the semantic triangle[31] and marks an important turning point on the way from the traditional intensionalist semantics to the extensionalist reference semantics as it became increasingly accepted in the 14th century.[

Ockham's logic marks an important, though not the only important, step in the process that might be described as a progressive ‘mentalization’ of sign. The idea behind this process is the contention that without some sort of ‘intentionality’ the phenomena of sign, signification and semiosis in general must remain inconceivable. This tendency of relocating the notions of sign and signification from the realm of spoken words to the sphere of the mind is characteristic of the mentalist logic arising in the early 14th century, and remaining dominant throughout the later Middle Ages. Words or signs, insofar as they concern rational discourse, were traditionally held to be the essential subject matter of logic. According to mentalist logic, however, the ‘words’ or ‘signs’ primarily relevant to logic are not the spoken words, but the trans-idiomatic mental words (verba mentis) or mental concepts. Thus, in later medieval logic, as already in Burleigh and Ockham, the mental sign will be the focus of logical semantics. According to a distinction introduced by Peter of Ailly (1330–1421) in the second half of 14th century, …a thing can be called a sign in two senses. In the first sense, because it leads to an act of knowing the thing of which it is a sign. In a second sense, because it is itself the act of knowing the thing. In the second sense we may say that a concept is a sign of a thing of which such a concept is a natural likeness — not that it leads to an act of knowing that thing, but because it is the very act itself of knowing the thing, [an act that] naturally and properly represents that thing (Peter of Ailly, Concepts, 1980, 17).

in his more elaborate second commentary on Peri Hermeneias, Boethius discusses at length the interrelations between the four elements of linguistic semeiosis mentioned by Aristotle, i.e., between external objects or things (res), mental concepts or representations (passiones, intellectus), spoken words (voces), and written words (scripta). These elements are arranged so that they build up what Boethius calls the “order of speaking” (ordo orandi) (Magee 1989, 64–92) which is characterized by the fact that among the elements mentioned the former in each case ontologically precedes the latter. Thus, without the existence of things there would be no concepts, without concepts no spoken words, and without spoken words no written ones.

In his incomplete early work, De Dialectica, Augustine massively draws on the terminology of the Stoic philosophy of language, though in many points fundamentally modifying its sense.[4] It is especially in the concept of sign where his difference from Stoic doctrines becomes apparent.

The idea, fundamental both for Bacon and Ps.-Kilwardby, that grammar is a regular science rather than a propaedeutic art, is shared by the school of the so-called “modist grammarians” (modistae) emerging around 1270 in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris and culminating in the Grammatica Speculativa of Thomas of Erfurt around 1300. The members of this school, taking it for granted that the objective of any regular science was to explain the facts by giving reasons for them rather than to simply describe them, make it their business to deduce the grammatical features common to all languages from universal modes of being by means of corresponding modes of understanding. Thus the tradition of speculative grammar (grammatica speculativa) develops the commonly accepted Aristotelian claim (De Interpretatione 1.16a3–9) that the mental concepts, just as the things, are the same for all men (eadem apud omnes) further to the thesis of a universal grammar based on the structural analogy between the “modes of being” (modi essendi), the “modes of understanding” (modi intelligendi), and the “modes of signifying” (modi significandi) that are the same for all languages. Along this line, Boethius Dacus (Boethius the Dane), one of the most important theoreticians of speculative grammar,[36] states that … all national languages are grammatically identical. The reason for this is that the whole grammar is borrowed from the things … and just as the natures of things are similar for those who speak different languages, so are the modes of being and the modes of understanding; and consequently the modes of signifying are similar, whence, so are the modes of grammatical construction or speech. And therefore the whole grammar which is in one language is similar to the one which is in another language.[37] Even though the words are arbitrarily imposed (whence arise the differences between all languages), the modes of signifying are uniformly related to the modes of being by means of the modes of understanding (whence arise the grammatical similarities among all languages).

Roger Bacon is probably the most important medieval theorist of sign — at least he is the author of the most extensive medieval tract on signs known so far.[21] Starting from a minute analysis of the notion of sign and its various divisions, Bacon develops both in De signis (ca. 1267) and in his Compendium studii theologiae (1292) a general conception of signification as well as a detailed theory of the linguistic sign, so that here, as in Augustine, semantics is integrated into a broader theory of sign in general. According to Bacon, the concept of sign belongs to the category of relation. To be more precise, a sign, as it was pointed out already in Augustine's definition, is a triadic relation, such that it is — in principle — a sign of something to someone. This way of putting the point, however, gives rise to the question of whether both relata of this relation are equally essential for its existence. What would happen if one of these relata did not exist? What if the designated thing ceased to exist?